Some implementation notes:
Support was added for MYSQL_TYPE_GEOMETRY
to the MySQLi extension in PHP 5.3.
Note there are different internal implementations within
libmysqlclient and mysqlnd for handling
columns of type MYSQL_TYPE_GEOMETRY. Generally speaking,
mysqlnd will allocate significantly less memory. For
example, if there is a POINT
column in a result set, libmysqlclient may pre-allocate up
to 4GB of RAM although less than 50 bytes are
needed for holding a POINT column in memory. Memory
allocation is much lower, less than 50 bytes, if
using mysqlnd.